Doug Stephen is Politely Peeved

At last year’s Google I/O, the company announced the Android Update Alliance, an initiative through which Google would work with its partners to ensure that Android phones and tablets would receive updates for at least 18 months after their introduction. This much-ballyhooed announcement wouldn’t have done much about the extreme diversity of hardware in the Android ecosystem, but it would have helped reduce the growing software fragmentation issues that the platform was facing.

There was just one problem: the Android Update Alliance hasn’t really been mentioned since, including in today’s keynote.

“Open” comes at a price. At the end of the day, new-model-a-minute phone manufacturers of the sorts that have dipped in to the Android game aren’t really all that concerned about making Google (or Android) “look good”, and they aren’t worried about their customers being up-to-date. They’re worried about selling phones.

Thing is, if they reversed their priorities, they might actually sell some phones.

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